


A Lake Full of Stars

by lena-in-a-red-dress (CSIGurlie07)



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/M, Getting to Know Each Other, Guardiancorp, How the picture came to be, Weekend Getaway, soft guardiancorp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23951077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CSIGurlie07/pseuds/lena-in-a-red-dress
Summary: When life gets to be too much, Lena gets out of town. This time, she invites James to join her. (aka the weekend at the lakehouse)
Relationships: Lena Luthor/James "Jimmy" Olsen
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

There’s something mesmerizing about Lena Luthor driving with the window down.

A warm breeze makes her long hair flutter and billow, and she gazes at the road ahead of them through a pair of Ray Bans that both highlights and softens the planes of her face. She underhands the wheel with one palm, while the fingers of her left hand tap a lazy beat against the outside of the door in time to the music that pours gently from the speakers

This Lena is a different beast from the one who suggested the trip the week before. James had been joking when he’d suggested chucking his phone in the trash and going off to live in the woods for the next year. But Lena hadn’t laughed. Instead she’d cited a friend who owned a lakehouse, barely glancing up from the tablet she’d been tapping on.

Now, she’s distracted again, but not with a thousand meetings and deadlines and project details. This Lena drifts with the winding road, coasting in sunlight and music. Her eyes are soft behind her shades, betraying gentle thoughts– or perhaps none at all.

When they pull into the long narrow drive up to the house, James glances at his phone to find Lena’s warnings of poor cell services were well founded. He can’t help the frisson of apprehension that awakens at the prospect of the weekend ahead.

They’ve never existed together without the pulse of their work in the background. Thus far they’ve been a couple with phones in hand, one finger on CatCo or L-Corp, always with the slight edge of competition– between themselves or against the rest of the world.

Without the burden of the outside world holding them together, would they fall apart?

Lena packed light. Throwing the car into park, she climbs out and hoists her single leather satchel the window from the backseat and shoots James a lop-sided smile over the roof of the car.

“Ready?”

Her voice is low, deepened by the early shadows cast by the trees already beginning to blot out the drooping sun. James reaches in for his own bags, and nods.

“After you.”

The lakehouse proves to be both nothing like he imagined and yet a perfect fit. They walk into an open floor plan that’s half exposed timber and half fieldstone, lit by the sunlight spilling in through the wall of windows that faces the lake.

James whistles as he wanders to the windows, and gazes out at the flat, glassy lake rimmed with evergreens. “Wow.”

Lena sidles up next to him, looping an arm around his waist. “Yeah. It’s pretty great, isn’t it.”

“Your friend has good taste.”

She gives a brief squeeze before releasing him to turn towards the stairs. “C’mon. Bedroom’s this way.”

James follows, but can’t help but glance back over his shoulder at the breathtaking view. When Lena had said her friend had a lake house, he’d imagined a mansion on a pond, all crowded in with a dozen other mcmansions. This place is everything but.

It’s not cramped by any means, but cozy– dwarfed by the sheer volume of wilderness just outside their door. The bedroom boasts a large bed, and wide windows that look out over the lake as well. One comes with a window seat, fashionably cushioned and home to a book splayed open on the seat, forgotten by its owner.

Lena snaps it shut, setting it aside to make room for their bags to sit.

“This place is nice,” James delivers, flopping back on the bed. He sits back up a second later, suddenly antsy. He snags Lena around the waist and pulls her close, delighting in her playful giggle. “This was a good idea. Thanks.”

A hum confirms Lena’s agreement as she leans down to kiss him. When she pulls away, her fingers stroke his cheek. There’s intimacy in the moment, the kind that lingers even as Lena changes the subject. “You hungry?”

James’ belly rumbles in answer. He grins. “Think they deliver pizza up here?”

Her laugh spreads warmth through his veins, banishing any lingering doubts.

“No,” she says, still grinning, “but there’s a stocked pantry and a kitchen. I’m sure I can manage to whip something up. Want to go explore a little while I cook?”

“I’d like to help with that…”

“Thank you, but I’ll be okay. Besides, didn’t you say you wanted to scope out a running trail for tomorrow?”

James perks up. “Oh yeah. I do, actually.”

“Take a flashlight. Dark sneaks up on you around here.”

If there’s anything James has learned in the past year, it’s that Lena Luthor is usually right. So he takes the flashlight she digs up for him and makes his way outside. Sure enough, the afternoon shadows have already deepened to near night under the canopy. But he finds a flat path the winds around the lake, and a mile in he knows it’ll take him in a nearly eight mile lap of the lake, if it doesn’t meander off through the trees. Perfect for a morning run.

For tonight though, he doubles back. The air feels clean in his lungs, and clear– like the reflection of the twilit sky in the flat lake on his right. It makes the blood buzz in his veins. He breaks into a jog just to bleed off the restless energy. Climbing up the steps to the elevated deck, his thudding heart kicks up another notch when he catches a glimpse of Lena through the windows.

Like staring at a movie screen, James watches Lena move around the kitchen. She slips fluidly between counters, shifting her attention between steaming pots and a cutting board and a sizzling pan with ease. She tastes a spoon, nods, and gives the sauce another stir before bending down to check on something in the oven, hips bopping gently in time to smooth music James can only just hear through the glass.

He watches longer than he should. He’s certain she’ll catch him staring, but when she turns towards him several times without registering his presence, he realizes that the darkness around him is impenetrable through the glass, and that he’s somehow stumbled across the sight of the Lena Luthor who exists when she thinks no one is watching.

Heart pounding for a whole new reason, James reaches for the door.

Lena looks up with a smile. “Hey! Mission accomplished?”

“Yeah, I think so. Does the path out back loop around the lake?” He inhales deeply as Lena nods with a hum of confirmation. “Wow. Smells great in here. Is that garlic bread?”

“I found some sauce in the freezer for pasta,” Lena nods. “Bread’s still in the oven. Set the table for me?”

James obliges readily, and by the time he’s opened every cupboard just to find the plates, utensils, and a pair of wine glasses, Lena’s heaped everything into serving bowls and popped the cork on a bottle of deep red wine.

The sauce is delicious, the bread warm and buttery, but it’s the quiet that James savors most. It might just be the best meal he’s ever had, with Lena and her elbows on the table and her eyes twinkling with warmth as she eyes him over a forkful of pasta.

“What?”

James smiles. “Just thinking how glad I am to be here with you.”

Her eyes roll with a teasing nudge of her foot against his shin. “Nerd.”

But her smile comes with a pleased flush, and she relaxes even further. Seeing her shoulders slouch, the enormity of the weekend ahead sinks in– and then melts away from James entirely.

James had worried it would unearth the unpleasant sides of themselves they hid from the world. He never imagined it might bring him a whole new facet of Lena to fall in love with.

Reaching out one finger, he strokes the back of her hand. Lena’s fingers turn readily, slipping their palms together neatly. “This weekend is going to be good,” she says.

Jame returns her smile. “Yeah. It is.”


	2. Chapter 2

James rises early the next morning, before the sky has a chance to brighten. His jog around the lake is better than he imagined it would be. He keeps it slow, loathe to break the early morning quiet with the smack of his shoes against the dirt, or fill his ears with his own puffing breath. It takes him over an hour to complete the circuit, but by the time he lopes up the back deck he feels energized in a way that he hasn’t felt in a long time.

A peanut butter and jelly sandwich waits for him on the kitchen island, along with an empty mug bearing a sticky note that directs him to the pot of coffee still on the warmer. Despite the signs of her wakefulness, Lena is nowhere in sight.

In the full light of morning, the house takes on a different feel. It feels clean, and energizing without being over-stimulating. Blankets lay across the back of every couch, and every piece of technology he sees is jarringly outdated. Even the television set, hooked up to a dvd player with a long AV cable, sports a silver trim around its glass face. A small collection of dvds sits on the shelf below.

The speaker Lena had used the night before is the only current tech– equipped with bluetooth and not much else, and lives next to a turntable, with a narrow selection of records slotted between it and the bookshelf next to it.

James chews at his sandwich as he peruses the titles. There’s shelves and shelves of them, in no discernable order. They all form an eclectic mix that all sport signs of avid reading: cracked spines and ruffled pages, even the occasional folded corner.

There’s something familiar in the disorderly chaos of the shelves, something that spans every title and spreads to the dvd title under the television. Taking it all in, it feels like something James should know, but can’t quite put his finger on it.

The eerie feeling doesn’t shake as he moves upstairs in search of Lena. The bed is empty and loosely made up. She’s not in the bathroom, or even the spare bedroom. He trots back downstairs in search of a basement stair he might have missed, but none turns up. The unsettled feeling amplifies when he makes one more pass upstairs in the hopes the view from the window might give him vantage enough to see if she ventured out for some exercise of her own.

It’s on that final pass that he spots the narrow stair hidden between a wall and a second floor bookcase. He almost has to turn to squeeze into it, the passage is so cramped, but it leads him up to a third floor he didn’t notice the night before.

The cramped stair, spits him out into a finished attic, sporting little but a rug and a pair of standing lamps– and a cushioned windowseat in front of a wide, round window. That’s where he finds Lena, curled cozily into the nook with a mug of coffee cradled in one hand and a book in the other. As he nears, James finds he recognizes it as the same one they’d found in the bedroom the night before.

In an instant, everything clicks into place.

The book, and the fact that Lena had found a staircase all but hidden behind a bookcase. The way Lena had driven up without looking at the navigation she’d plugged into her phone. How Lena had moved so naturally in the kitchen, with intimate knowledge of where everything was located.

This isn’t a friend’s house.

_It’s hers._

It feels familiar because bits of Lena are reflected everywhere– in the warm decor and soft furniture, and the color schemes. In the book titles and movie dust jackets, there she was. Fragments of her personality James has only glimpsed and yet recognizes instinctively.

Before James can react, Lena looks up from her book.

Her features crease into a smile. “Hey! Sorry, I meant to be downstairs by the time you got back. Must have lost track of time.”

James bends to give her a kiss, then perches on the edge of the seat. “That’s okay,” he grinds out. His mind races, both to process his revelation and decide what to do about it.

“I imagine that’s kind of the point of a place like this,” he stalls, giving her socked ankle a rub. Lena’s eyes sparkle at him, reflecting specks of sunlight from the window. Her cheeks are rosy, and rounded with a continued smile.

“It might even…” He reaches out and runs a finger over the corner of her book. “Be why you chose it.”

He chooses his words carefully. If she chooses to maintain the lie, and interpret his words as why she reached out to her friend for this house. If she does, James is fully prepared to leave it be.

But instead he watches Lena’s features shutter in guilt before her gaze slides away, bracing for the accusations sure to follow. James reaches for her hand. 

“Hey.”

Solemn eyes flicker to him, flat with expectation.

“I don’t mean to put you on the spot,” James continues. “I just wanted you to know, that I know.”

If this is her place, he doesn’t want her to have to waste energy trying to maintain a pretense he’s already seen through. Instead of putting her at ease, however, Lena’s gaze slides away again.

“We don’t have to talk about it. But I’m here if you want to.”

When Lena doesn’t answer, James retreats downstairs. He tries to get comfortable on the sofa in the living room, but the silence from upstairs presses against his skin, slowly twisting at his insides.

He shouldn’t have said anything. He’d thought it would let her relax that much more, not having to maintain the pretense. Obviously, he’d miscalculated. Now they have another two days cooped up in awkward silence. If Lena doesn’t insist on leaving early.

Desperate for a distraction, James snags a book from the shelf and makes his way outside. The deck is still too close to the oppressive quiet, so James heads for the long pier jutting out over the lake.

He goes to the very end, and slips off his shoes to dangle his bare feet over the water below. The book sits unread on the planks beside him, ignored in favor of staring at the flat surface of the lake. James’ jaw slowly unclenches, and little by little the calm of the lake and the quiet of the surrounding woods works its magic. His muscles relax, and his thoughts go fuzzy.

All it takes is a slow blink, for James to open his bleary eyes to fallen dusk and heavy limbs– and Lena sitting on the edge of the dock beside him, wrapped in a chunky woolen cardigan.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly, as James straightens, blinking away the cobwebs. She doesn’t look at him.

“You don’t need to apologize,” he offers truthfully. “I can’t say I understand it, but I want to.”

Lena stares sightlessly at the surface of the water, shoulders hunched against the recrimination she expects to hear.

James turns towards the water as well, studying the gradient of the sky melting from violet to deep, fathomless black.

“Does it have anything to do with Thanksgiving?” he asks.

“No. Yes. Maybe.”

She sighs, frustrated by her own uncertainty. “You’re the first person I’ve brought here.” She shrugs helplessly. “I guess in the back of my mind I was trying to find a way it would stay mine, if…”

“If things didn’t work out,” James finished.

Dark eyes finally turn to him. “Yeah.”

Her eyes slide away again, and in the quiet that follows, Thanksgiving replays in James’ head. He can still feel his determination that day, his righteous anger. He remembers Lena’s features, stricken. Exposed in a way he’d never seen before– or since.

“I’m sorry I dismissed your concerns about Guardian, and the Children of Liberty. I’m sorry I ever made you feel like your opinions didn’t matter. They do. _You_ matter to me, Lena.”

When she doesn’t respond, James swallows thickly. “Are you comfortable with me being here?”

“Yes,” Lena croaks. She tries again. “ _Yes_. I was never worried about that. I wanted you here, I just…”

Again, her tear-filled eyes flash across James’ memory. However justified his anger that day, he’d said those words to inflict damage– and they had. No wonder she’d tried to hedge her bets, and have the best of both worlds. To have a nice weekend, and no lingering strings if they parted ways again.

“It’s okay if we need to take things slow,” James allows. “Take time to rebuild…”

But Lena shakes her head no. “It’s not about taking things slow.”

“Then what is it about?”

Lena curls in on herself. “What I wanted was intimacy without consequences. To have you to myself without offering any of myself in return. But it doesn’t work that way. If I want to be close with you, then… it means that I have to accept that it’ll hurt when you’re not there anymore.”

“Lena…”

_“If._ You know what I mean.” She sighs, but her shoulder presses gently against his. “My point is– I’ve done the no-strings thing. The all fun and sex, but no substance. I hated it. I want more. But I’m still not used to… being vulnerable. I’m sorry.”

James nods. He gets that. It’s been a while for him too, but he suspects that vulnerability means something different to woman who’s lost as much as Lena– as visible as Lena– as targeted. No magic words come to him in the silence that follows, but out there in the wilderness, the tension softened with the rustle of a breeze through the pines, the tapestry of stars stitched into the surface of the lake.

“So this is your place,” he murmurs softly, letting a grin color his voice in the darkness. Lena relaxes against him, and James wraps an arm around her shoulders to bring her closer.

“My Fortress of Solitude.” She offers it as a joke but can’t hide the kernel of truth underneath the levity.

“So… do I need to be worried about lasers and gatlings if I go poking around?”

Lena snorts. “No,” she teases. “There’s no security here.”

James freezes. “Are you serious?”

“Unless you want to count the lock on the front door. Which you shouldn’t, because I don’t remember actually locking it last night.”

Alarm tingles across James’ senses, even as he struggles to maintain the levity. “Lena–”

“Before you go all defender of the innocent on me, Mr. Guardian,” Lena delivers calmly, “let me remind you that I’ve lived with security since I was four years old. And I can tell you that after a certain point, it just becomes another cage.”

She presses a kiss to the corner of his jaw. “This is my place to get away. From everything.” When she leans back, she does so just enough to meet his gaze. “I need you to understand that.”

Oh, James doesn’t like that. Not one bit.

But Lena’s message is clear. He doesn’t have to like it. He just needs to get on board.

“Yeah,” he says finally. “I do. I get it.”

He’s just not sure he’ll ever be as casual about Lena’s safety as she is.

“If it makes you feel better,” she allows, “I do have a sat-phone for if the landline ever goes out.”

Or is cut. Or if her car is sabotaged, or– James shuts down his worst case scenarios and plays it cool. “Oh yeah?”

Lena hums. “And a strict no horror movie policy.”

James barks a laugh, earning a toothy grin from Lena that glints mischievously in the darkness.

“That’s a good call,” he chuckles. “Wouldn’t want to be jumping at every sound and freaking out the neighbors.”

Climbing to her feet, Lena’s laugh is low and definitely not in response to his joke.

“Lena… you do have neighbors, right?”

Another laugh answers him, drifting eerily into the night air.

“Lena!!”


	3. Chapter 3

James wakes to the first hints of sunlight making its way in through the gauzy curtains lining the window. Beyond them lies the lake and a long run, but James doesn’t move. His muscles are lined with sleep and comfort, and he floats in the quiet. Riding the line between awake and asleep, he connects murky thoughts to realize that there’s a second set of breaths echoing his.

In the months they’ve been together, James has long since learned that though Lena operates on an inhuman amount of sleep, when she does sleep, she sleeps hard. His laborious roll towards her doesn’t alter the slow meter of her breathing in the slightest, and James grins to find she’s found her favorite position to sleep– laying on her right side, hugging the edge of her pillow. It leaves her facing away from him, and he takes in the slope of her shoulder in the twilit hour, savoring the quiet.

When his watch buzzes silently against his skin, James ignores it. He ignores the secondary reminder too, as the room grows steadily brighter around him. Still Lena sleeps, dead to the world.

He finally drags himself out of bed an hour later, and moves quietly to fish his clothes out of his bag. But when he looks over to Lena, now able to see her face and the way the sunlight shines around her like a halo, his fingers close around his camera instead.

He’d almost not brought it. It’s been so long since he used a camera he thought his finger might forget how to hold it. But they slip into a familiar hold around the casing, and settle into a comfortable grip as he quietly find the best angle. He finds it quickly, as natural as breathing, and focuses for a heartbeat more before snapping the picture.

The shutter is loud, finally enough to rouse Lena from her sleep. Bleary eyes blink open and fall on him and his camera. A sleepy smile presses into her pillow, but she doesn’t protest the picture. Instead she gives a little sigh, eyes closing as though not worth the effort of keeping them open.

“Come back to bed,” she murmurs softly.

James smiles, leaning in to press a kiss to her cheek. “Yes, ma’am.”

He sets his camera aside, thoughts of his run forgotten. Slipping back under the covers, he fits around Lena like he’s always lived there. Burying his nose in her hair, he feels Lena’s body relax into sleep once more, deepening breaths unperturbed by the soft kiss he presses against the back of her neck.

“I love you.”

He waits, just in case Lena’s awake enough to hear. He aches to hear it back– to hear his forgiveness uttered here in the raw honesty of two souls alone in the wilderness. To overwrite the first ‘I love you’ Lena had uttered with a voice roughened by tears. To relegate Thanksgiving to the memory of a bad dream, and to turn their focus to a future together.

Lena remains silent, save for the gentle exhalations that warm the skin of James’ arm. But in that moment, James registers the lake house around him, filled to the brim with the pieces of Lena the world never got to see– and the weight of her comfort in his arms.

He’d wait forever to hear Lena say those words again, but in that moment, James realizes– she already has.

* * *

They leave the lakehouse in the late afternoon. This time, Lena’s GPS remains unused, and she drives home with the wind in her hair and a smile on her face. James relaxes in the passenger seat, absorbing the view he’d missed on the way in. He understands now, the draw of the wilderness. The lack of security, the seclusion from the world. He feels like the calluses have been scrubbed away from his heart, leaving him to experience the world anew.

He’s almost disappointed to see the tall trees shift into suburbs, and then the city proper. But when Lena pulls up in front of his building, his body hums with renewed vigor.

“Wanna come up?” he asks.

Lena’s lips press into a chagrined smile. “I have an early meeting tomorrow I need to prep for.”

“Okay,” James nods. He lingers in his seat. “Thanks for sharing the weekend with me. I had a great time, spending it with you.”

Her only response is a simple nod, as though she hasn’t just laid her solitude open for him to share. He leans in, and presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “Lunch tomorrow?”

“Definitely.” She returns his kiss with one to his lips, as soft and gentle as the words that follow. “Love you.”

James hides the skip in his heartbeat with a smile.

“Love you too.”


End file.
